Kansas, the KKK and Hate Without End
By Peter Gottschalk, Los Angeles Times
April 16, 2014, 5:47 p.m.
The news that a former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan is suspected of shooting and killing three people near Jewish community centers in Kansas seems at first glance like a disparaged past flaring briefly into the present. Americans like to imagine that the KKK belongs to a long-gone South and anti-Semitism to a distant 20th century. Sadly, this better reflects a naive faith in the nation’s history of religious tolerance than the realities experienced by many religious minorities. Although the KKK has evolved and its membership has dwindled, it remains part of an American legacy of religious intolerance.
A central tenet of U.S. nationalism rests on a notion of welcoming huddled masses, but the idea of American exceptionalism also runs deep. When Americans have imagined their country’s uniqueness as defined racially, religiously or culturally, those outside those parameters are immediately suspect. Sadly, religion has often served as the catalyst for prejudice.